NVIDIA CEO: Windows 8 on ARM should target tablets first

NVIDIA president Jen-Hsun Huang has warned Microsoft not to position Windows 8 on ARM as PCs, arguing that tablets should be the company's first focus. The outspoken CEO described his argument as coming from "a finesse perspective" in an interview with AllThingsD, and a hope that Microsoft puts its software emphasis on bringing full Office support to the ARM-based version of the platform. "That would be the killer app," Huang reckons.

Everything else, Huang continued, is on the web. As we've already seen, in our preview of Windows 8 on tablets, the platform does a solid job of integrating the browser into the normal workflow, as well as allowing multiple pages to be juggled and simultaneously viewed on a touchscreen-only device.

Huang obviously has a vested interest in Windows 8 being tablet-centric from the start. NVIDIA chips are, the exec claimed, currently inside around 70-percent of the non-iPad tablet market, and he said he would definitely be open to powering future Apple iPads too.

As for the future, we've already seen a video promoting NVIDIA's Tegra 3 "Kal-El" leak earlier this week, and Huang says the company is focusing its attentions on bringing down power requirements and reducing complexity. Some of those techniques involve taking advantage of the shortcomings of human users, he claims: for instance, using GPU-powered image-processing techniques that analyze colors and use a smaller palette, based on what the human eye can perceive.